1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic/manual slide type communication terminal, and more particularly to a slide type communication terminal having a travel-enlarging member in order to be smoothly completed a sliding operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
Generally, slide-type communication terminals have upper and lower bodies, which can be overlapped with each other, and a slide structure to allow the upper and lower bodies to be slid with respect to each other, thereby opening or closing a predetermined region of the terminal.
Such a slide type communication terminal has a guide member fixed to one side of the terminal to guide a sliding movement of the upper or lower body, and a sliding module comprising a slider fixed to the other side opposite to the one side to which the guide member is fixed, to slidably reciprocate along the guide member.
For instance, in the case where the upper body is provided at the rear side thereof with the guide member, the slider is coupled to one side of the front surface of the lower body, and slidably reciprocates along with the lower body contacting the guide member.
FIG. 1 shows the rear side of a conventional slide type communication terminal, which will be described as follows.
The conventional slide type communication terminal comprises an upper body 10 having a display screen (not shown) provided at the front side of the upper body, and a lower body 20 having a battery pack coupled to the rear side of the lower body, such that the upper and lower bodies 10 and 20 are overlapped in parallel to each other and slidably reciprocate to open or close a predetermined region of the terminal. The conventional slide type communication terminal comprises guide slits 11 provided at the rear side of the upper body 10, each of which has a guide member (not shown) therein to guide a sliding movement, and sliders reciprocating along the guide members while sliding together with the lower body 20.
However, since the sliders of such a conventional manual slide-type module must be completely slid to the end in order to open or close a predetermined region of the terminal, there is a problem in that it is relatively difficult to open or close the predetermined region of the terminal, for instance, it is not easy to open or close the terminal with one hand, compared with a folder type communication terminal.
In order to solve the problem, there is a need to provide a slide type communication terminal designed to allow easy manual sliding operation.
FIG. 2 is a schematic view illustrating a conventional slide type communication terminal designed to allow the sliding operation to be completed by virtue of an elastic force of an elastic member when a stroke of a half or more is applied to the elastic member.
Referring to FIG. 2, the slide type communication terminal comprises a first hinge 50, a second hinge 30, and an elastic member 40. The first hinge 50 is fixed to a lower portion of a main part, not shown, and the second hinge 30 is fixed to an upper portion of a sliding part, not shown. The first and second hinges 50 and 30 are connected to each other by means of guide grooves 36 and guide flanges 56, allowing the sliding operation.
The elastic member 40 comprises a torsion spring 42 and a fastening screw 44. The torsion spring 42 has one side fixed to a fixing groove 37 of the second hinge 36, and the other side fixed to the first hinge 50 by means of the fastening screw 44.
That is, the torsion spring 42 is fixed to the first member 50 and to the fixing groove 37, thereby providing the elastic forces in opposite directions to the first and second hinges 50 and 30 centering on a predetermined conversion point.
Operation of the slide-type communication terminal constructed as described above will be described as follows.
When the sliding part (not shown) is pushed to open a predetermined region of the terminal from a closed state, the second hinge 30 starts to move from an initial state. Then, when the sliding part is pushed to a point after passing the predetermined conversion point where the elastic force reaches a maximum elastic force, the second hinge 30 is completely moved in a direction that the predetermined region of the terminal is opened by virtue of the elastic force generated from the torsion spring 42.
With such a conventional slide type communication terminal, although the sliding part can be manually operated, there is a problem in that it cannot be automatically operated.
FIG. 3 is a schematic diagram illustrating the rear side of the conventional slide type communication terminal, which can manually and automatically realize an opening/closing operation of the slide type communication terminal.
The slide type communication terminal shown in FIG. 3 comprises a first body 70, a second body 40, a pinion gear 75 mounted on one end of the second body 70, a rack gear 61 mounted on one side of the first gear 60 in a longitudinal direction to mesh with the pinion gear 75, a drive motor (not shown) mounted on the second body 70 to supply a drive force, a power transmission part 80 to transmit the drive force of the driving motor to the pinion gear 75, and a control switch 62 to control operation of the drive force.
In the slide type communication terminal, when the driving motor is operated using the control switch with the second body 70 closed, a rotational force of the driving motor is transmitted to the pinion gear 75 through the power transmission part, rotating the pinion gear 75, and the rack gear 61 meshed with the pinion gear 75 is moved, allowing the first body 60 to move upwardly, resulting in an opening of the first body 60.
As such, an automatic sliding operation of the conventional slide type communication terminal can be simply realized using the pinion gear 75 and the rack gear 61. However, when realizing a manual sliding operation of the conventional slide type communication terminal, there are problems in that, as with the conventional manual slide type communication terminal, it is difficult to open or close the predetermined region of the terminal with one hand, and in that it is difficult to completely open or close the predetermined region of the terminal by one time application of external force.
To illustrate, let D be a diameter of the pinion gear 75, a stoke S moved by a rotation of the pinion gear 75 is π×D. Accordingly, in order to obtain a desired stroke only with one rotation or 180° rotation of the pinion gear 75, the diameter D of the pinion gear 75 must be increased, and thus a thickness of the body, on which the pinion gear 75 is mounted, is also increased, thereby impeding miniaturization of the communication terminal.
Accordingly, a predetermined moved stroke can be ensured by increasing the number of rotations of the pinion gear 75, but in this case, there occurs a problem in that the manual operation cannot be smoothly performed.
Particularly, in such a conventional automatic slide type communication terminal, the rack gear 61 and the pinion gear 75 are provided as different modules, providing problems of a mesh disorder and a difficult assembly. Furthermore, a problem occurs in that not only an initial positioning of the first and second bodies, but also optimization of a sensor part is difficult.
In order to solve these problems, there is a need to provide a communication module, which has the slide type opening/closing means as a single module while allowing a smooth sliding operation.